


Something Inside that Pulls Beneath the Surface

by Longdaysjourney



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hallucinations, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:00:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22919602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Longdaysjourney/pseuds/Longdaysjourney
Summary: Matt thought it would be different this time, but once the headlines and adrenaline fade, the hallucinations return.Their tiny firm is temporarily tucked away in a back office on the second floor of Nelson’s Meats while they figure out their next move – Foggy’s sure strokes on a new napkin, the contract holding their formerly fractured trio together.Title is an edited line from a Linkin Park song (Crawling).
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Karen Page
Comments: 33
Kudos: 65





	1. Matt

Matt thought it would be different this time, but once the headlines and adrenaline fade, the hallucinations return.

Their tiny firm is temporarily tucked away in a back office on the second floor of Nelson’s Meats while they figure out their next move – Foggy’s sure strokes on a new napkin, the contract holding their formerly fractured trio together. 

In the wake of Fisk’s arrest, life slowly resumes in Hell’s Kitchen and their makeshift office seems to be ground zero for the resurgence of everyday disputes and annoyances, given room to breathe now that the threat of imminent neighborhood implosion has momentarily abated. Most cases are fairly simple – tensions between neighbors, an inattentive landlord letting conditions in his units slide, a spouse behind on child support – but some require a defter touch, drawing on the disparate talents of Nelson, Murdock, and Page’s three principals.

Although the day is just dawning, the sun extending fingers of warmth into Manhattan’s corners and shadows, Karen has already come and gone. She had stopped by the office to update them on her investigation’s progress, dropping off two cups of steaming coffee from the breakfast cart downstairs (Matt refrains from calling her a goddess, smiles sadly at the memory) before plunging back into the teeming city.

Today she’s interviewing a reluctant witness she’s managed to persuade to meet with her. Matt imagines her smile, the angles of it that he can sense – simultaneously sweet and feral. Karen makes for an incongruous predator, seemingly fragile but with a core of steel, and uniquely talented at divesting people of their hard-fought secrets while convincing them the whole thing was their idea. It’s a talent that served her well in her brief sojourn as a reporter at the Bulletin, striking near dread in those targets she’s set in her sights and envy in colleagues years – sometimes decades – her senior. 

With Karen gone, the normally crowded office feels emptier, absent the coiled impatience she can’t quite contain when worrying at the edges of a puzzle, like a dog with a particularly recalcitrant bone. 

Matt wonders, not for the first time, if her recent, frequent forays out of the office are efforts to avoid him. They had reached a détente of sorts, after Father Lantom’s funeral – each acknowledging the missing pieces within themselves and committing to a stronger, more balanced friendship. But some tension remained, skirting the edges of their renewed bond, beneath the smiles and jokes. And if any part of her still wondered whether there might be a path forward for them, a path that had been interrupted by all that came before, Matt’s senses could not divine it. 

Foggy is at his desk at the opposite end of the room, elbows propped up on the pocked wooden surface, palm pillowing his cheek as he leans forward. While he reads, he makes an occasional humming noise deep in his throat. 

His heartbeat, steady and true, reaches across the small space separating their desks. Leaning back in his chair, Matt closes his eyes and tries to empty his mind, layer by restless layer, tries to allow Foggy’s proximity to anchor him. He doesn’t quite succeed. The outside world, even buffered by the familiar shop – the cured meats and cheeses stacked in orderly rows in their glass cases, the soft snick of a cash register drawer as it’s closed, Foggy’s brother in quiet conversation with a regular, intrudes. 

Matt loves difficult cases, his head bent over his beloved law tomes – relishes the detours down musty, unexplored paths in search of long-forgotten precedents, the careful consideration of each economical word, how interpretation might turn on a single phrase. Although LexisNexis is amazingly accessible these days with screen readers and other assistive technologies, Matt prefers to leave the online work to Foggy or Karen, who’s become quite proficient at navigating the legal landscape because, as she puts it, “It’s impossible to be around law dorks all the time without some of it rubbing off.” 

If he’s being honest, though – it’s the distraction he welcomes. With the immediate threat of Fisk removed and Daredevil temporarily benched while Matt finally allows himself the time, under rumblings of mutiny from Foggy and Karen, to recover from his injuries, the familiar darkness has returned, setting upon him with a swiftness that’s left him reeling.

From experience, he knows that eventually, he’ll lose the fight against the torpor; that it will drag him down. It is inexorable, implacable. It can’t be bargained with or rationalized away – and in these cramped quarters, he’s denied even the reprieve of a closed door. He feels naked, exposed. Wondering, how much he’ll manage to hide this time.

Once in a while, Foggy’s eyes flick up from his reading towards Matt, his gaze settling on him appraisingly. Although it’s a fiction they both had promised to dispense with, Foggy says nothing about what he sees and Matt pretends not to notice his scrutiny.

“You know you can’t protect him”, Fisk’s voice, shattering the quiet, materializes suddenly from Matt’s left. Matt starts, badly – it’s hard to surprise a man who can detect heartbeats from blocks away, so when it happens, he’s ill-equipped to compensate. He coughs and shifts stiffly in his chair. Too late – he can feel Foggy’s gaze, spotlight-intense, directed his way. 

“Everything okay, Matt?” Foggy’s breathing quickens. There’s a scrape of wood on wood, as he half pushes himself away from his desk.

“Uh, yeah,” Matt tries to inject as much sheepishness as he could into those two words. “My foot just fell asleep. I guess I’ve been sitting at this desk for too long.” As if to illustrate his point, he gets up carefully, makes a show of stretching his shoulders by clasping his hands behind his back and lightly tugging. 

“Okay,” Foggy says, voice swamped by doubt, but he doesn’t challenge him.

“You’ll slip up at some point, at some crucial juncture, and Nelson and Karen will pay the ultimate price for your arrogance.” Fisk continues smoothly. The shop’s odor of meat and sawdust has been swapped out with the faint tang of sweat, overlaid with a hint of spice and pine. Matt can hear the slide of silk and wool over skin – the threads of the fabric, fine and supple, like poured liquid.

“Shut up.” Matt’s whisper is almost soundless; its syllables don’t spill beyond the four corners of his desk, but he worries that Foggy, with his non-super hearing, will hear all the same. He tamps down on the rising compulsion to scream at Fisk’s apparition.

“You couldn’t save Father Lantom, Elektra died in your arms - twice, and your father…” But Matt doesn’t hear what Fisk has to say about his father. Bending down, he picks up the briefcase propped against his desk, shoves in the papers he was reading, and starts for the door.

“Matt?” Foggy is calling after him, but he’s already crossed the threshold and is pounding down the stairs, singularly focused on getting away – as if putting physical distance between them might protect Foggy from the demons pursuing him, might protect him from Matt. “You forgot your cane…” 

As he steps out from under the shop’s awning, relief swallows him whole – so acutely that he momentarily sags against the support column, cool brick at his back. The deli is a few blocks from home. Even without his cane, he can negotiate the several hundred feet separating him from the relative quiet of his apartment without drawing too much attention. 

The sun, hot and intense, warms his skin; his glasses won’t seem out of place. With his head angled down, he blends into the crowd – another office drone in a hurry to reach their destination. A part of him longs to slip into an alley, scale a ladder, and travel unfettered from building to building, where the noise and stink and omnipresent need of the city ebb – but he knows the danger if someone should happen to look up, how strange a figure in a suit with a briefcase would seem flitting across the rooftops. 

One foot in front of the other, Matt thinks grimly - the promise of refuge pulling him along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 3 was so dense that I felt it left quite a few plot threads dangling... This is my meager (beginnings of an) attempt to explore one of them -- Matt's hallucinations.
> 
> It's unclear (to me) if the Fisk and Jack Murdock figures he debates with are true hallucinations or just a way to depict Matt's inner monologue working shit out at a time when he was isolated and not really talking to anyone else. As the season goes on and he reconnects with Foggy and Karen, the hallucinations seem to disappear. At any rate, I thought it was an interesting rabbit hole to tumble down.
> 
> Incidentally, NaTak wrote an extremely skilled and moving exploration of a Season 3 hallucination follow-up:  
> <https://archiveofourown.org/works/17186138>  
> If you haven't read it yet, I'd highly recommend it.
> 
> Also, I know nothing about the law or lawyers - so please forgive the clumsy attempts at describing what they do.


	2. Matt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two blocks away a garbage can lid clatters as it falls to the pavement, pulling Matt from a fitful sleep. For a moment he’s disoriented – not sure where he is and how he got there. Slowly, the familiar smells of his apartment filter in, grounding him: the not-quite-scentless detergent radiating from freshly laundered clothes; coffee, still in its pot, left over from the previous morning; the sour bite of milk gone slightly off in the fridge.

Two blocks away a garbage can lid clatters as it falls to the pavement, pulling Matt from a fitful sleep. For a moment he’s disoriented – not sure where he is and how he got there. Slowly, the familiar smells of his apartment filter in, grounding him: the not-quite-scentless detergent radiating from freshly laundered clothes; coffee, still in its pot, left over from the previous morning; the sour bite of milk gone slightly off in the fridge. 

The laundry and coffee are of course Foggy’s doing – he’s gotten into the habit lately of dropping in on Matt to make sure his shelves are stocked and floors swept. Just a little housekeeping, he says, because Matt had been away too long – as if he had just returned from an extended vacation, not popped back among the living like an unwelcome ghoul.

Immediately after Fisk’s second incarceration, in the warm glow of his friends’ company, his casual mention of reclaiming his apartment – reclaiming Matt Murdock, had been met with approval and hope. But reality, as usual, was messier.

The trip to the police station to withdraw the missing person report Foggy had perfunctorily filed after Midland Circle was simple as was switching the accounts for the utilities back to Matt’s name. But his apartment, ransacked by the FBI at Fisk’s direction, had been a mess – drawers upended, papers (those that didn’t end up cataloged and carted away) scattered, clothes tossed on the bed or left in piles on the floor, the lingering stink of wet fur from the search dogs. He was a mess too – the strain on the seams painstakingly holding him together beginning to show. 

The first night Matt spent there, he had waved off Foggy and Karen at the door before they could follow him inside, insisting he was okay. When the last of their retreating footsteps vanished out of range, he released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, forehead pressed against the door and hand gripping the doorknob.

The next day, they found him under a stack of blankets in an untouched corner of his bedroom after letting themselves in with Karen’s key. Foggy sighed noisily, “Should’ve known you’d need some help getting this place functional, buddy.” The “and you” was left unsaid. 

While Karen disappeared, trash bag in tow, to sort out the detritus in the living room, Foggy squatted down next to Matt – shaking a paper bag next to his ear. “But now, it’s time for bagels,” he said brightly. “Come on, Murdock, up and at ‘em.” He patted the Matt-sized lump encouragingly and then stood up, knees popping a little. Matt tracked his progress as he made his way to the kitchen and started opening cabinets. “Do you have any coffee in this wasteland?” 

By the time he extricated himself from the blankets, stumbled into the bathroom and emerged slightly more human – Karen had already tidied much of the living room. What was irretrievable was dumped into two trash bags set under the picture window, the rest arranged into neat piles on his dining table. 

Karen approached him, taking off her cleaning gloves in one fluid motion and smoothing down his wet hair in another. Carefully, she cupped his chin and turned his face to examine him, her fingertips light and soft against his skin. It had been so long since he’d been touched in that way that he froze, spine rigid until the scrape of a stool being pushed across the floor released him. 

Matt sighs – in some ways, he’s made so much progress since those initial days of recovering his life; in others, the gains feel minute, inconsequential. His back and still-healing ribs creak as he unfolds his legs and levers himself upright to a sitting position. He’s on the couch in the living room, still in yesterday’s rumpled work clothes, tie discarded somewhere on the ground and jacket tossed on the back of a chair. It’s evidence, along with the blank spot in his memory, that he didn’t so much sleep as pass out, his body finally succumbing to the exhaustion he had pushed away for too many days – an overdrawn account finally claiming its due. 

In his rush to escape the office yesterday, he had left behind the key to his apartment. And the other key, the one hidden behind the hallway sconce, had been claimed by Karen during those months she was paying his rent. Left with few options, he was forced to enter through the roof, waiting for the heartbeats outside his building to disperse enough for him to shimmy up the fire-escape undetected. 

Unbidden, his mind flashes back to another rooftop entry. His body broken, and his spirit nearly too, stumbling down the steps when his grip on the banister faltered. Despite his training and boosted senses, he’s still amazed he managed to survive. Fisk had taken care to thoroughly stack the deck. An involuntary shudder passes through him – “You’re not Franklin Nelson” – the clipped words precise and deliberate, the syringe full of drugs, the dawning realization – as he fended off wave after wave of inmates and guards – that Fisk didn’t intend for him to walk out of there. How easily that jail or the water-logged taxi that followed could have been his tomb. 

If it had been Foggy that day at the prison instead of him… His mind stutters to a stop, unwilling to complete that thought.

“But one day it will be Nelson, and you won’t be there to protect him.” In the emptiness of his apartment, Fisk’s voice echoes. “He’ll hope you’ll come – perhaps he’ll even cry out for you, but you won’t be listening. That’s when I’ll strike.” 

Matt stiffens, hands folded into fists at his side. “I’ll stop you, like I’ve stopped you before.” His bravura is thin, pathetic – even to his own ears. He remembers Nadeem and Father Lantom and all the other people he’s failed. He remembers pushing Foggy away and Karen down as bullets rained overhead. He remembers Foggy brushing his shoulder shakily, fingers smeared with blood.

“You can’t be everywhere at once, at all times.” Fisk sounds untroubled, as if he’s engaged in a conversation with a friend. The scent of pine and spice is back, cloying this time, overpowering everything else. Matt gags on it. 

“You know I’m right,” Fisk’s voice rumbles on, seeming to come from deep within that barrel chest. “You should have killed me when you had the chance, but instead, you showed mercy. You made a deal. Do you think deals will stop me from extracting my revenge?” He scoffs, “If you believe that, you are as naïve as that partner of yours.” 

With a suddenness that leaves him dizzy, Matt stands and launches himself at Fisk. He pulls back an arm, bent at the elbow, and throws a propulsive punch, then another, feels Fisk’s cheek split open underneath his fists. Before he can land a third blow, Fisk’s meaty fingers catch his wrist and twists, sending him sprawling to the floor.

Something in his chest shifts and cracks when he lands. Matt coughs, struggling to breathe as his senses narrow to a single point. Dimly, he hears Fisk’s laughter above him as his world on fire winks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Matt's hallucinations (at least in the TV series) seem to echo his worst fears and beliefs about himself. I wanted to explore that a little - as well as cover some of the timeline immediately after S03E13.


	3. Foggy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy’s at his desk. A patch of sunlight streams over his shoulder, illuminating the brief he’s reviewing, but he isn’t really absorbing the text in front of him. Instead, his eyes dart periodically to his watch and then the door, expectant. When Karen walks through it a beat later, he can’t hold back his scowl.
> 
> Karen, ever-observant, catches his expression and says, amused, “Come on, don’t hold back. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” She’s balancing two coffees – one in each hand, a notepad tucked under her armpit and a handbag slung over her right shoulder.

Foggy’s at his desk. A patch of sunlight streams over his shoulder, illuminating the brief he’s reviewing, but he isn’t really absorbing the text in front of him. Instead, his eyes dart periodically to his watch and then the door, expectant. When Karen walks through it a beat later, he can’t hold back his scowl.

Karen, ever-observant, catches his expression and says, amused, “Come on, don’t hold back. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” She’s balancing two coffees – one in each hand, a notepad tucked under her armpit and a handbag slung over her right shoulder. 

Foggy’s scowl deepens. “It’s not you, Karen.” He sighs, pushing himself away from his desk and dropping the pretense of reading completely. “It’s Matt. Yesterday, he ran out of here like his ass was on fire and I haven’t heard from him since.” 

Karen carefully sets down a cup on his desk and the other on Matt’s on the opposite side of the room. Her forehead furrows delicately and an errant strand of hair falls across her eyes. Impatiently, she pushes it back and tucks it behind her ear. “What was happening right before he left?” she asks finally. 

Foggy sighed. “That’s just it. Nothing really.” He stands up and starts pacing in tight circles in front of his desk. “He just got up and left. Even left his cane behind,” his hand waves vaguely towards the corner of the room, where Matt’s red-tipped cane stands propped against the wall.

“Has Matt seemed okay to you – the last couple of weeks?” Karen asks.

“Yes, I think?” Foggy’s voice, uncertain, trails off. “I don’t know,” he admits after a pause. “I guess I was so glad to have him back that I tried not to question anything too much.”

In truth, Foggy has been treating Matt like a skittish animal about to bolt. With a twist in his gut, he mentally runs through the last several days. Matt _has_ been quieter than usual, their conversations confined to direct responses to questions, with none of the meandering off-topic detours they sometimes fall into. And now that he’s thinking about it – every time he’s proposed grabbing some lunch, Matt waved him off with an urgent task that needed to be completed or a phone call that had to be returned right away.

“He’s seemed okay to me too, but I haven’t really been around that much.” Karen avoided Foggy’s eyes guiltily. “I guess after we managed to convince him to stop his nighttime activities for a while, I didn’t want to face that pout,” she laughs, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe we should call him?”

“I’ve tried, I’ve been trying, all morning – it goes straight to voicemail,” Foggy checks his watch again, the slanting rays of a maturing day spilling into the office. “Screw it, privacy be damned. Let’s go over there.” He shrugs into his jacket and, without looking to see if Karen’s following him, tosses back, “You still have your key, right?”

***

Foggy and Karen climb the stairs to Matt’s walk-up. Sweat collects on Foggy’s neck, the skin there a little flushed against his shirt collar. “I forget sometimes that Matt’s basically Captain America with all of his extracurricular calisthenics.” 

“I think someone’s just gotten a little too used to the good life – you know, fancy elevators opening up on single floor suites, car service, meal delivery,” Karen laugh is light, her breathing easy, the turncoat. 

When they reach Matt’s floor, the door across the hall opens a crack and a gray head peeks out. “Can you tell your friend to stop raising his voice so early in the morning? Sound really carries in this building.” The woman’s tone was reproachful, “The walls are thin.”

“Sorry about that, Fran, we’ll be sure to tell him to be more considerate,” Foggy says. Fran peers at him dubiously from behind thick glasses, snorts indelicately and, slamming the door, retreats back into her apartment. 

Karen had already turned towards Matt’s apartment during Foggy’s exchange. Her key slides into the lock and she pushes the door open, calling as she enters the dark hallway, “Matt? Are you here, Matt?”

Frowning at the lack of response, she walks into the living room and sets her bag on the kitchen counter. The mid-morning light does little to illuminate the gloom – darkness swallows the adjoining kitchen, out of reach of the apartment’s picture window, and the sparse furniture in the living room cast fuzzy shadows on the floor’s worn slats.

Foggy, following close behind, notices a dark rust stain on the ground right behind the couch that he doesn’t remember seeing the last time he’d been over. And is the couch also slightly askew from its typical position? These weren’t trivial details, Foggy knows now. Matt always arranges everything – at home and at the office – on a grid, to more easily navigate the spaces he frequents the most. 

When Foggy first found out about Matt’s abilities, he’d just assumed that the blindness, although maybe technically true, had been a lie all along – that Matt could function as well as anyone with sight. Without really meaning to, Foggy stopped narrating visual cues, which had been weird at first. He hadn’t realized how much his incessant prattling had been connected to telling Matt about the visual world around them – from Josie’s put-upon, but secretly fond expressions to Karen’s gestures to the debut of their favorite newscaster’s unfortunate haircut.

Slowly, however, he started to get a more nuanced understanding of what Matt could and could not do. Print – at least the smooth print of newspapers and today’s printers – was difficult to impossible; while body language, as long as the movements weren’t too subtle, was largely okay. Still, at any given moment, Matt was assaulted by sensory missives arriving by touch, sound, taste, and smell that – from what Foggy could see – were sometimes overwhelming.

Foggy remembers coming into the office one night during the Castle trial to retrieve a file. He’d been pissed – Matt had missed a strategy session during the day with a feeble excuse, something about staying up too late the night before. As he entered the dark space, Foggy didn’t initially realize anyone else was in – but when he flicked the light switch on, he heard a faint groan coming from Matt’s office.

He poked his head in and saw Matt folded in on himself, forehead touching the desk, hands pressed tight over his ears. The skin over his knuckles was white with tension.

Foggy wasn’t sure if he’d heard him come in and didn’t want to startle him, so he settled on lightly rapping the window to get his attention. The response, a full body flinch, knocked the glasses off his face. Matt looked up then, eyes widening when something – heartbeat, scent, respiration? – telegraphed Foggy’s presence. Foggy could see the sweat rolling down his face and registered the pinched line his mouth made. Before he realized his feet were moving, Foggy was striding towards him.

“I’m okay,” Matt said hastily. “Just feeling a little overwhelmed.” He continued, gritting out the words, his jaw clenched in pain, “I – I felt bad about skipping out on you and Karen this afternoon. I thought I could get some of my closing statement written before tomorrow.” He took a deep breath that turned into a gasp, “I th-thought the office would be emptier than my building, easier to-to concentrate.”

“What is this?” Foggy’s voice was gentle. “Did it come on suddenly?” 

Matt nodded, an economical downward shake of his head, “Yeah. It happens sometimes when I’m tired or stressed. Just have to wait for it to pass.” He paused, considering his next words. “I think you’d call it sensory overload. My senses – the input, it’s too much. I can’t… I can’t keep up.”

Foggy had a lot of questions, including some incidents in law school and their first year interning at Landman & Zack that suddenly needed some contextualizing in light of what he just learned, but it wasn’t the right time to address them. He folded Matt carefully into a hug instead, feeling the tension in his friend’s shoulders ease nearly imperceptibly. They stayed like that, locked in an embrace, for a long time – until Matt’s breathing evened out and the tightness in his jaw loosened. 

The quiet interlude that day had been a brief respite, a truce before their partnership fell apart the second time.

Distracted by a growing sense of dread, Foggy grabs the armrest and pulls, straightening the couch in one motion and crouching down to examine the marks on the floor more carefully in the next. He brushes his fingers lightly over the grooves worn into the wood and recoils at the dampness he encounters. Under the weak light, his fingers glisten with blood.

Karen shoots him a look and heads into the bedroom. A moment later, her voice low, but urgent, calls him, “Foggy!”

He quickly steps past the sliding doors bisecting Matt’s apartment, but stops short when he sees Karen. She’s on her knees next to Matt, who’s curled up on his stomach in front of the bathroom door, still in the same clothes he had worn to work yesterday. Carefully, she turns him onto his back. A red stain, its borders spreading sluggishly, marks his left side and his breathing is shallow. 

When Karen starts to unbutton his shirt, Matt’s eyelids twitch and snap open and he begins backing away from her, the confusion plain on his face. “Matt!” Foggy says, hoping to ground him before the panic overtakes him. “It’s Karen and me.”

The fear in Matt’s eyes ebb – “Foggy?” Seizing the opportunity, Karen resumes unbuttoning his shirt and peels it off his shoulders, taking care not to jostle still-healing wounds – his body, still a minefield of injuries in different stages of repair. 

Some of them – the precise cuts along his collarbone, the deep gouge in his side – Foggy wishes he could forget, linked as they are to that terrible night when he found Matt bleeding out in his apartment and the world fractured into a familiar before and an incomprehensible after.

Others are new. He thinks he recognizes a few, can match them to events Karen or Matt had told him about – a grim timeline of collected hurts writ large on pale skin. 

“Matt,” Karen sighs. And Foggy marvels at how she manages to infuse that lone word with equal parts love, fondness, exasperation, and concern.

“It looks like you re-opened some stitches.” Foggy can see Karen’s mind working, parsing through the many questions, marshaling her thoughts. Instead, she says, “I’ll get your first aid kit.” 

She disappears into the bathroom. Seconds tick by, then Foggy hears the sound of the tap running. Meanwhile, he hooks his arms around Matt and props him carefully into a sitting position. Throughout, Matt’s breathing remains shallow, his eyes staring dully forward. Foggy’s worry deepens.

A few moments later, Karen re-emerges, the tin case housing Matt’s first aid kit in her hand. Threading a needle with a confidence that surprises Foggy, she sets to work repairing the stitches Matt had torn open – up and down and in and out, the motions rhythmic and steady.

After Karen ties off her second overhang knot, making sure to secure the suture line close to the skin, she sits back and surveys her work. Seemingly satisfied with what she sees, she nudges Foggy with her foot, shooting him meaningful glances and then shifting her gaze to Matt, whose eyes are closed again.

Foggy clears his throat. “So, what happened, Matt?”

Matt opens his eyes and sighs. “Nothing. I just got a little dizzy and fell.” He ignores Foggy’s huff of disbelief and skims his hand over his left side, “I think I may have re-cracked some ribs.”

He shivers a little, wrapping his arms around himself. This snaps Karen to attention, “Jesus, sorry, Matt. We should get something on you.” She rifles through his closet, bypassing the neat rows of work shirts and jackets, each with its own Braille tag, and reaches into the back where his sweatshirts and T-shirts hung. 

Once Matt’s changed into an ancient hoodie and a pair of sweats, he hobbles to the couch, leaning heavily on Foggy’s arm, and carefully lowers himself onto the cushions. Even with Foggy’s help, he half-falls the last few inches, the effort leaving him panting.

“Matt,“ Foggy says, unable to keep the worry out of his voice. “Fran heard you shouting this morning. Do you mind telling us what that’s all about?”

Matt’s eyes are evasive, aimed past him and down, towards the shadows collected at the corner of the room. Foggy may not have super-senses, but he knows Matt Murdock and he knows when he’s about to lie. 

The drawn up hood shrouds half of Matt’s face; but what’s visible causes a tiny flare of alarm to ignite in Foggy’s chest. He looks frail and wan, as unsteady and uncertain as he had seemed when he miraculously re-appeared months after his presumed death, with exhortations to Foggy to stay away from Fisk while simultaneously swiping his wallet.

There’s a moment’s hesitation before Matt’s clipped reply comes, “I was arguing with someone over the phone.” 

Foggy rolls his eyes, “I’m not even going to dignify that ridiculous statement with a response – if you don’t want to tell us, then…” He pauses, reverses course, “Except, dammit, Matt – you said there wouldn’t be any more secrets between us.”

Matt gapes a little at Foggy’s vehemence, but quickly recovers his composure and Foggy mentally prepares himself for whatever verbal pyrotechnics Matt plans to employ to answer/not-answer his questions. 

Abruptly, Matt tilts his head to the side, his face a mask of concentration, listening to something out of Foggy or Karen’s range. Karen breathes deeply, as if she’s preparing to speak, but Foggy shakes his head, his eyes fixed on Matt. 

Finally, Matt bows his head, murmurs, “You’re right. I should tell them.” Speaking into his chest, he begins haltingly, “Several months ago, when I... when I first heard that Fisk had been released, I started experiencing hallucinations.”

He raises his head, his sightless gaze aimed at the middle distance – “At first, I think I knew what they were. But as they came more frequently, I started to lose it – I shouted at them, attacked them.”

“Who’s they? Who were you hallucinating?” Karen asked. She’s halfway to standing; instinctively, her hands reach out to him.

“Um, mostly Fisk. Sometimes my dad.” Matt’s voice, low and rough, is barely audible. “After we put Fisk away, the hallucinations seemed to stop. I figured it was a few aberrant episodes during a stressful time and tried to forget.” His fingers splay out on the tops of his thighs, form fists that clench and unclench.

“But they haven’t stopped, have they?” Foggy prompts. A small shake of his head was Matt’s only response.

“Okay,” Karen’s suddenly brusque, efficient. Foggy recognizes the sentiment – it’s the ‘we can do something about this’ mode that takes over, self-preservation by way of compartmentalization. “We’ll call Claire; get you to a hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Matt and Foggy say almost simultaneously. That earns them a collective laugh, briefly dispelling the tension.

Foggy grips Matt by the elbow, hauls him to his feet and ushers him towards the hallway leading out of the apartment. “No, no hospitals, but we need an honest-to-goodness medical professional – we need to call Claire.” 

Foggy takes the silence that follows as acquiescence. He tosses Matt’s burner to Karen, “Can you call her, Karen? Tell her we’re on our way?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got a little long, hopefully it doesn't drag too much...


	4. Matt

Matt gently pulls away from Foggy’s hold to turn back briefly towards the living room. Two heartrates, one on either side of him, ratchet up in response. He pats Foggy’s shoulder in, what he hopes is, a reassuring way.

His father’s voice – solid, comforting, even after all these years, after everything he’s been through – washes over him, “You’re doing the right thing, Matty. Your friends will be able to help you figure this out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little coda, from Matt's POV.
> 
> Whew! 5,000+ words later - for me, this has been the longest piece of sustained non-work-related writing I've written in a long time. I'm still not entirely happy with it, it feels rushed and yet overstuffed at the same time (how does that happen?), but it's done. 
> 
> I'm not sure if I'm done yet with the playing around with Matt's hallucinations though. They're such a rich source of angst and story to plumb!
> 
> Thanks for reading if you've managed to make it this far.


End file.
